The end of party politics, cont’d.

My previous post offered that current events heralded the end of party politics as we know it: The EU Referendum and General Election in the UK went by-and-large across party lines, and the Presidential and General Assembly elections in France went to a party that didn’t exist a year ago.

And recent news does nothing to increase the UK voting population’s confidence in their party leaders:

• Tim Farron pictured atop, stepped down from the Liberal Democrat (LibDem) leadership, citing that his religious views were getting in the way of his peers’ and the public’s confidence in him
• the Grenfell tower block fire in London leaves questions unanswered as to the local Councils fire safety compliance, after previous calls to address that were rebuffed by then London Mayor Boris Johnson
• as early as this January, current London Mayor Sadiq Khan said that security is curtailed by police budget cuts, which were started a few years ago by then Home Secretary Theresa May

Consider these facts also:

• after Labour depicted in my previous post, LibDems were seen to hold the incumbent party to account especially in the upcoming Brexit negotiations
• both May and Johnson, whose decisions had disastrous consequences cited above, are now Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary about to negotiate Brexit
• and as a party now without majority, the Conservatives seek to attain it by calling on the Democratic Unionist Party of Northen Ireland (DUP detailed at bottom)

Can UK voters be blamed then for lacking confidence in the party system as it’s lined up today?!

My previous post proposed two things: the ascendance of the working class and allies against the owning class and the business elite, and the fact it was aided or accompanied by the breakdown of party politics. If that happened over a year period between the EU Referendum and the General Election, however, the subsequent events depicted above happened in the last month!

I argue that far from “the third party system […] on the wane” reported after a pre-General Election debate, this accelerated time-frame heralds an instability that spells the end of party politics.

On the one hand Theresa May has said “I got us into this mess I’ll get us out of it” that sounds more defiant and individualistic than collaborative. On the other hand my local MP Heidi Allen tweeted in the aftermath of #GE2017 “We @Conservatives will learn from this. We will listen, collaborate more& demonstrate greater vision& compassion for all. We HAVE to change”. And regarding her party and DUP “Deeply unhappy w idea of a formal coalition w DUP. We should run w minority Gov & work Xparty on big issues. UK demands grown up politics”. I found also that she engages with us through resident drop-un surgeries as well as communiqués from Brexit to campaign replies.

In other words, it behoves us to engage with our local representatives and rebuild the politics _as_we_want_it_ from the bottom up.

PS: this second in a series continued here.

DUP details:

• They are climate-change deniers, anti-gay and pro-life today
• They had Ulster Unionist terrorist ties in the seventies reign of terror fighting Sinn Fein
• With the latter, DUP supposed to hold devolved government in Northern Ireland , guaranteed by a neutral Westminster
• The Good Friday Agreement that set that out is, however, no longer possible with DUP as allies to Conservatives in Westminster